By: Dan
Devine
Ball Don't
Lie
Amid video-game-promoting
assertions of his own individual primacy and his unfamiliarity with twerking,
Hall of Famer and Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan related a story
earlier this week about having gone head-to-head with a brash young thing named
O.J. Mayo at his annual Flight School camp.
The meeting
came back when the Milwaukee Bucks guard was still a heavily hyped high-school
student sorting through scholarship offers from big-name programs; he'd
eventually choose USC, spend one year in L.A. and enter the draft, going third
overall to the Minnesota Timberwolves before being swapped for No. 5 pick Kevin
Love in an eight-player deal.
"In
front of my camp, he starts this thing: 'You can't guard me, you can't do
this,'" Jordan said. "I've got my campers here, so obviously I can't
really go where I want to go because of my camp, so I stop the camp, send the
kids to bed, and we go back to playing and he starts this whole thing that,
'You can't guard me, you can't do this,' and finally I said, 'Look, you may be
the best high school player, but I'm the best player in the world. From this
point on, it’s a lesson.' And from that point on, it was a lesson.
"He
never won a game. I posted him up. I did everything. If I could ever show you
that film ... If you could ever ask him, ask him about the thing that happened
at my camp."
Since the
Bucks had just opened training camp, media members soon obliged M.J.'s request,
leading to O.J. sharing his side of the story:
Well, I
happened to be the only high school player there. It was mainly freshmen in
college. And so [Jordan] came on the court and he guarded me, so I was like,
"Man, he must think I'm ... not the strong link over here." I got it
going a little bit, and obviously, it's any ballplayer's dream to play against
Mike — I couldn't tell you how many times I did his move after the finals the
next day in the rec center and stuff. I got a few buckets, and I think the
campers knew I was the only high school kid, so they got rowdy a little bit and
we got a little bit of jawing.
I think we
played two games — I think we split one and one. It was a team game. And then
he said, "OK, now let me handle my business," and he looked me in my
face [...] He said, "I need all the campers and everybody to leave. Let's
clear the gym." I said, "Oh, man."
We continued
playing pickup and, you know, Mike was Mike. You know, he was jawing a little
bit, and he was really getting into me defensively. He was backing me down and
saying, "You better scream for Mama. Ma-ma. Ma-ma." Hit the famous
fadeaway on me, and then I said, "OK, OK, you got it going." He said,
"Hey, young fella, let me tell you something." He said, "You may
be the best high school player in the world, but I'm the greatest ever. Don't
you ever disrespect the great like that."
At the end of
the day, people ask, "Why would you talk smack to the GOAT? Why would you
talk smack to Mike?" At the end of the day, it's still basketball. You
know, you definitely respect everything Mike's done for the game, but when
you're a young buck and you get a chance to go at the top, I kind of had the
mentality that I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. And, you know,
Mike did what he had to do.
If, as Mayo
tells Bucks broadcaster Jim Paschke, the game took place before Mayo entered
his junior year of high school, which would have been the summer of 2006,
pegging him at 18 years old. That'd put Jordan — who, as you might have heard,
turned 50 back in February — at 43. But testimonials can only tell us so much
about the kind of work Jordan was putting in at 43 — what did the
"lesson" actually look like?
Well, now we
know, thanks to Larry Brown Sports, which shared video of M.J. and O.J.
squaring off late Wednesday night:
A tipster who
was at the camp emailed LBS to confirm the story.
“When I read
the story and saw the MJ interview on your site, I quickly realized I had
witnessed and recorded MJ’s story. It was surprising how accurate MJ’s memory
was too,” our tipster said.
The video
above is recorded from the night Jordan schooled Mayo at his basketball camp at
UCSB. Our tipster believes the year was 2006 (Mayo graduated high school in
’07). Our tipster says other players on the court that day included future
NBAers Jerryd Bayless, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Jared Dudley, Coby Karl and
Julian Wright.
In the video,
the first clip is from a game Jordan played in front of the whole camp. After
that clip comes four highlights from the game where Jordan taught Mayo the
lesson. You can see Jordan beat Mayo in every way possible in the game.
Including —
as you see at just after the 1:10 mark — "the famous fadeaway." Just
plain mean, and just (about) as clean as it was back in the prime Mike was so
fondly recalling as he conjured up prospective one-on-one opponents to promote
"NBA 2K14."
Assuming that
2006 timeline is correct, Jordan was three years removed from his last NBA
action with the Washington Wizards when he worked Mayo over. It's been a full
decade now, but that hasn't stopped rumblings about the ever-competitive Jordan
actually making good on the threat of coming back at 50 that he made during his
infamous Hall of Fame induction speech, even if only for one game.
While such a
limited return engagement is, of course, incredibly unlikely for a wide variety
of reasons — chief among them being that Jordan is, y'know, FIFTY YEARS OLD —
it would obviously be a spectacle unlike just about anything the NBA's seen in
the recent past, and Jordan's choice of opponents (the Miami Heat, with LeBron
James and Dwyane Wade? the Los Angeles Lakers, after Kobe Bryant's return?)
would be fascinating. And though it'd never happen in a million years, it's
kind of fun to envision Jordan choosing to suit up one more time to take on the
Bucks, just to give an in-his-prime version of Mayo one more shot. (Preferably,
of course, that fadeaway.)
Stay
connected with Ball Don't Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL and "Like" BDL on
Facebook for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario